1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a toner container and a developer replenishing device which is detachably installed to an image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine, a printer, a facsimile machine, and the like with toner, in order to replenish a developing device provided in the image forming apparatus, and an image forming apparatus to which such toner container or developer replenishing device is installed.
2. Description of the Related Art
A toner container disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-280344 is known as prior art. The toner container includes a box-like container to be charged with toner and a toner replenishing device provided at a bottom of the container in order to discharge toner to replenish a developing device with the toner.
Such a toner container is attached to or detached from an apparatus main body with an end (for example, top end corner) of the container held by a user.
Since a toner container is manufactured to allow the container to contain a predetermined amount of toner and to smoothly replenish the developing device with the toner within the container, an ease for attachment and detachment of the container to and from the apparatus main body of the image forming apparatus is hardly considered. Therefore, it is typical that the container is attached to or detached from the apparatus main body while an end of the container is held by the user.
However, if the user attempts to attach and detach the toner container while he/she is holding the container, the container is not always in a state of enabling the user to hold it with ease. In this regard, there are often such cases that the user cannot stably hold the container, which causes a troublesome in attachment and detachment of the container.
Also, if the image forming apparatus, for example, is for the use of multi-color print in which a plurality of toner containers containing different colors of toner are installed side by side into the apparatus main body, there have been such problems that it is difficult to insert fingers between two adjacent toner containers and thus to hold the container easily and securely.